Above Average Joe Blogs

Back in 2013, I was eagerly awaiting the release of two games - Bioshock Infinite, and The Last of Us. At a first run through both, it was Bioshock Infinite that stuck with me the most, entangling me in a mind mindbogglingly convoluted and meta-textual melange of parallel universes and commentary on the very nature of how gamers each have their own unique experience through a game. It also offered jaw dropping revelations impacting upon the series as a whole, which had my mind racing and reading forum after forum on the meanings. The first The Last of Us game swiftly followed, and my initial response was somewhat muted. It had exceptionally polished gameplay, and motion capture acting that was second to none, but par for the course for developers Naughty Dog at that point (although never with the emotional depth and range as demonstrated in that game). However, I found the overall plot to be too episodic and the larger picture to be all too predictable. It was crushingly disappointin...

The intention of the filmmakers to distinguish Moonraker from its sequel, For Your Eyes Only (FYEO), would on paper appear to be an attempt to mimic Bond's final act in the Moonraker film - that of sci-fi spectacle, crashing down to reality. And whilst FYEO  does grapple with fairly low-key affairs, for a Bond film at least, it doesn't quite give up the garish trappings of the past, leaving it uncomfortably straddling the two. In FYEO, the premise evokes classic Bond, particularly From Russia With Love, with Britain and the Soviets vying to take control of the lost British ATAC system, that allows the British government to communicate with its various missile subs. To do so, Bond has to entangle himself in the Greek underworld, aided by an avenging angel with a personal grudge to fulfil.  Sounds real world enough, right? Well, weirdly the pre-credit sequence does little by the way of acting as a mission statement. Starting with Bond visiting the grave of his dead ...

In 1977, Star Wars smashed onto screen, fusing fantasy and sci-fi into a big, mainstream space opera epic, and kickstarting one of the biggest franchises ever made. In 1979, Alien did the same for nail biting sci-fi horror, again kicking off a blood soaked saga, still screaming today. In 1979, Moonraker decided, "Hey, I can do sci-fi too" and does, and chucks in the sci-fi sink too. Moonraker the novel, is about a wealthy industrialist turning out to be a Nazi who became injured in WW2, blagged his way as an Englishman, who then plans to blow up London with the "Moonraker" missiles, originally made to protect Britain. It notably does not involve a megalomaniac with a space station ready to launch globes of lethal toxin on Earth, who then wants to repopulate it with his own chosen "master race." It also does not involve a bit when a pigeon double takes at seeing Bond pilot a convertible gondola onto land. As is the case of many Bond films, Moonraker t...

The Spy Who Loved Me often gets compared to Goldfinger for what it meant for the respective Bond actor - namely that both Moore and Connery were 3 films in when they made their archetypal and arguably left their most iconic stamp on the series with that third film. For Goldfinger it was slotting the classic Bond templates into place, for Moore it is taking the epic stylings of You Only Live Twice, and proving that Rooge certainly does it better. For that is (more or less) the title track for this Bond film - Carly Simon's "Nobody Does it Better" going against the trend of having the title song more often than not referring to the villain, and instead providing our hero with a piano led power ballad bigging up Bond. With the title track seguing in from an pre-credits sequence as iconic as Connery's scuba-gear to tuxedo reveal in Goldfinger, being a spectacular ski to Union Jack parachute stunt, the two elements of the opening sequence and song work in tandem as a m...

There's an old adage with the Bond films, that the film is only as strong as its primary antagonist. Take Goldfinger, Goldeneye, or Skyfall as prime examples. However, with The Man with the Golden Gun, we have one of the best villains of the series, who is stuck in a quagmire of a plot, drowning in non-sequitur after non-sequitur that are nonsensical even by Bond's standards. What starts off as a promising plot, having the titular villain of the piece, Francisco Scaramanga (played with regal menace by the ever reliable villain Christopher Lee), seemingly putting a hit on the world's best secret agent, soon devolves into kung-fu hi-jinks and the chase for the most bland McGuffin of the series (the Solex Agitator - picked as a comment on the 1973 energy crisis). Let's start with the best and work down? Lee is fantastic in the role of Scaramanga, playing him off as a dark inversion of Bond himself. Erudite, cultured, with an appetite for violence and women, you can...

The previous entry in the series, Diamonds are Forever, whilst commercially and fairly critically successful (at the time at least), was not enough to prevent Sean Connery from jumping ship upon completion of the film. This left producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli back in the unenviable position of finding a new actor to portray Bond. United Artists, the distributors of the films were pushing for an American to take up the role, seeking Burt Reynolds or Adam "1960s Batman" West, however Saltzman and Broccoli insisted that the job be given to a British actor. In the end, the spotlight was cast back to before the film series existed, finding Roger Moore who was considered when Dr No was in production. Considering how Moore played the part of Bond, it is unsurprising that Adam West was also in contention, for much in the same way that West played Bruce Wayne/Batman, Moore's tongue is firmly planted in his cheek, and accompanied by an arched eyebrow of camp. ...